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Sunday, May 05, 2013

The VA can be hazardous to Veterans' Health

Americans have always prioritized caring for the needs of our military Veterans. The Continental Congress of 1776 promised pensions for any disabled veteran of the Revolutionary War.

Despite criticism of deficit spending over the last four years, there was universal support for increasing the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) budget by 41% to $140 billionthis year. That is why it is so depressing that the backlog for claims pending applications for disability doubled to over 900,000 and the number of claims delayed by over a year has skyrocketed by 2000%. Despite this abysmal performance, senior VA executives have collected 35% bonuses on top of their lavish pay and benefits.

The ability of the VA
and their 300,000 employees to provide service-related benefits is on the verge
of collapse. Congressional revelations confirm that over the last four
years, the delays newly returning veterans face before receiving disability
compensation and benefits are far longer than the 273 days the agency had
acknowledged. Inspection of theirinternal data reveals
that for first-time claims, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wait
is now averaging between 316 and 327 days.

Despite the huge
increases in funding, staffing at the VA’s 58 regional offices only grew by
less than 300 people since September 2010 – even as the volume of new claims increased
dramatically. The average increase in delayed claims processing seems
grim, but veterans filing for the first-time in America’s major population centers wait
twice as long. Delays are 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles
and 542 days in Chicago. Those veterans waiting more than a year for
their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009 to 245,000 this December. The
error rate for claims processing now hovers around 14% and an average of 53
veterans die each day while waiting for their benefits to begin, according to the Center for
Investigative Reporting.

“I’m not surprised at
the number of us that kill ourselves … You just get so hopeless”, said Lincoln
Capstick an unemployed Iraq War veteran in Indiana, where the average wait is
612 days. His electricity was cut off three times while he waited for the
VA to grant a disability claim for traumatic brain injury, headaches and a
variety of leg and knee injuries sustained when was run over in the desert near
the Iraq-Kuwait border. The Veteran’s Administration data reports that 22
veterans commit suicide every day.

The VA blames the
backlog on a 455,000 increase in the number of claims filed due to an uptick in
returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and veterans requesting compensation
for PTSD and Gulf War illness. But the average veteran wait time for
filing disability fell by more than a third under from 2001 to 2009, despite
more than 320,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans filing new disability claims.

The VA’s disability
claims processing crisis has been compounded by the department’s in-house
effort to develop a high-tech Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS)
promising to streamline claims processing throughput by 40 to 65%. According
to a strongly wordedreport from the
department’s Office of the Inspector General; after spending $537
million on a new Web-based system, 97% of veterans’ claims remain on hard-copy
paper. The Inspector General also warned the weight of paper files at the
Winston-Salem, N.C., VA office has compromised the structural integrity of the
building.

The computer project
is designed around the twelve“Agile
Manifesto”principals
for adaptive software development that includes“Sustainable Development”. Since the crushing report was
released this January, the top two VA technology officers retired, stating that
they had “accomplished their goals.”

Congress has been
getting bi-partisan heat from constituents and has thrown lots of money at the
VA to address the backlog. But last week a new VA scandal broke out when
it was revealed thatMichael Moreland, the top
regional administrator of a Pittsburgh hospital where an outbreak of
Legionnaires’ disease sickened 21 veterans and killed at least five, won a
$62,000 bonus as a Presidential Distinguished Rank Award. The award goes
out to no more than 1% of federal executives and provides winners with a cash
bonus equal to 35% of their salary. J. David Cox, president of the
American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing VA’s
hospital workers criticized the award: “This is absolutely
unbelievable.” If Mr. Moreland retires this year, he will be able to
count the award to increase his life-time pension payments.

Mr. Grundstein’s pursuit of his interests has provided a good diversion frommmaking a living. His education includes liberal arts at the University of Michigan, culinary training and a degree in piano performance. He has traveled on six continents and produced many articles, editorials, social commentaries and books. The subject matter of his works include public affairs, travel, food and the culture of food.

Under duress, he will admit he went to law school and is a state bar member, but found a dignified way to make a living.

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